Text size:

Obama transition team eyes Bill Clinton's dealings

BY ELIZABETH MOORE | elizabeth.moore@newsday.com; TOM BRUNE

November 19, 2008

The all-but-public process of vetting Hillary Rodham Clinton as a potential secretary of state is, by all evidence, now focusing on how to keep her husband's sprawling global network of charitable and private activities from becoming an ethical or national security problem.

Since he left office in 2000, former President Bill Clinton's presidential library and foundation and his philanthropic Clinton Global Initiative have grown into a multibillion-dollar web of relationships extending through some of the world's richest and poorest countries - not all of them democratic.

Sen. Clinton has engaged three prominent lawyers to help President-elect Barack Obama vet her candidacy, The Associated Press reported last night, even as some insiders criticized the pick and advisers to the former first lady said she was weighing whether to take the job if Obama offered it.

"He [Obama] is trying to figure out how to handle Bill, and quite frankly she's trying to figure out how to handle Bill," said a source familiar with the confirmation process. "You can't have foreign dictators financing the pet projects of a husband of a secretary of state."

Attorneys Cheryl Mills, David Kendall and Robert Barnett are working with the Obama transition team to review information about the Clintons' background and finances. All three represented the Clintons on legal matters in the White House, including Bill Clinton's dalliance with intern Monica Lewinsky that led to his impeachment in 1998.

Officials knowledgeable about the vetting said it has gone smoothly and that both Clintons were cooperating fully. Bill Clinton already has suggested he would step away from day-to-day responsibility for his charitable foundation while his wife served and would alert the State Department to his speaking schedule and any new sources of income, they said.

Since he left office, former President George H.W. Bush has made millions of dollars from speeches and kept up ties with the Saudi royal family. Jimmy Carter has monitored elections in multiple countries and met with Hamas.

But Bill Clinton is in a class by himself, experts in nonprofit conflicts of interest say.

"The size of Clinton's operation is a factor that dwarfs the other folks," said Pablo Eisenberg, a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Public Policy Institute. "It's both a national security and a diplomatic issue. ... Clinton has got to agree up front should Hillary be named that he will disclose his donors."

Manhattan attorney William Josephson, former counsel to the Peace Corps and head of the state attorney general's Charities Bureau, said he believes the former president will have to step away for now from the philanthropy he has built. " ... I would think that he would need to stop raising money from foreign sources - at a minimum," Josephson said. "... People give money for many reasons, and one is to exercise influence. ... If he believes the work that's being done is valued and should continue, then it should be carried on by someone else."

Eisenberg and others also point to Bill Clinton's 2005 trip to Kazakhstan with Canadian mining executive Frank Giustra, who received preferential access to state-controlled uranium after Clinton gave a speech extolling reforms planned by the president of a country his own wife had sharply criticized for its human rights record. Giustra later made a $31.3-million donation to Clinton's foundation, The New York Times reported.

Paul Light, professor of public service at New York University, said he believes Bill Clinton's reputation for undisciplined remarks could be a particular problem.

"Because they are husband and wife ... it's natural to assume that he may be speaking for the administration at any point in time ..." Light said. "The world will say, well, is there an extra meaning to what the former president is saying?"

GLOBAL NETWORK

Hillary Rodham Clinton's chance of becoming U.S. secretary of State could hinge on the vetting of her husband's worldwide dealings. Since leaving the White House in 2001, Bill Clinton has engaged in his own international diplomacy with a foundation, speeches and investments. Here's a snapshot of his known global reach:

WILLIAM J. CLINTON

FOUNDATION

He has raised more than $500 million for the foundation, which runs his charitable activities and presidential library. He refuses to make donor names public.

CLINTON GLOBAL

INITIATIVE